The looming possibility that on June 1 a federal judge in U.S. District Court in Northern California could grant the potentially earth-shattering lawsuit of O'Bannon v. NCAA class-action status has left college athletic administrators concerned.

What started four years ago as a simple, if big-dreaming, lawsuit – former UCLA basketball great Ed O'Bannon suing over the NCAA's continued use of his likeness, long after his 1996 graduation, in a video game – has snowballed into a legal challenge of college sports' entire economic model.

The NCAA kept earning money off Ed O'Bannon long after he stopped playing for UCLA. Here on the eve of the 2013 NCAA basketball tournament, there isn't anyone in college athletics that isn't taking it seriously. One day soon, maybe even by 2015, the players themselves could be getting a share of the billion-dollar revenue, a once-unthinkable development.

The O'Bannon side is seeking a 50/50 split. The NCAA wants to keep it 100/0 and has expressed no interest in negotiating. Billions of dollars hang in the balance.

Last week, a cadre of college administrators, including Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds and Wake Forest president Nathan Hatch, submitted written declarations in an effort to persuade the judge from granting class action. They were mostly filled with gloom-and-doom predictions of what would happen should colleges have to actually share any of the money with current or past players.

Much of the media attention has focused on Delany claiming the Big Ten would never comply and instead would "take steps to downsize the scope, breadth and activities of their athletic programs," he wrote. "Several models exist … such as Division III."